Increasing Acceptance of Technology Assisted Review

March 28th, 2017

In December 2016, the Supreme Court of Victoria endorsed the use of Technology Assisted Review (TAR) in the eDiscovery process in the case of McConnell Dowell Constructors v Santam. This was the first time TAR had been approved for use in litigation in an Australian Court.

The Victorian Supreme Court decision follows landmark decisions in the US, Ireland and the UK. In New Zealand, Judge David Harvey in Kim Dotcom Vs. USA, back in 2012, advised the parties to consider options like TAR to deal with the large volumes of electronic information in the discovery process. These decisions encourage lawyers and legal technology professionals ineDiscovery to consider the use of TAR in litigation.

Todays’ increasing data volumes and the subsequent cost of managing this data require us to work smarter and make better use of technology. TAR is one of the options that can now be deployed in the discovery process in litigation as it is proven to be considerably faster, cheaper and more accurate than any human review method.

It has simply become too expensive to ‘eye ball’ or review every potentially relevant document to litigation proceedings. New practices and technology have been developed to respond to these challenges to enable lawyers to identify relevant documents required to be disclosed more quickly and cost effectively. The use of technologies like TAR assists parties in litigation to meet the requirements ‘of a just, efficient and cost-effective resolution of the dispute’ by reducing the time and cost involved during the discovery process.

These decisions will help increase the acceptance of TAR in Australia and New Zealand. While Technology Assisted Review will not be right for every matter it should be at least one of the options now considered in litigation matters.